


Doom Days

by scorose



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hunger Games, Mentions of Nightmares, Mentions of PTSD, Mockingjay, Mockingjay Spoilers, Post-Mockingjay, Shuffle Challenge, iPod Shuffle Challenge, kind of get-together fic if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 12:03:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19811926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorose/pseuds/scorose
Summary: My own variation of the iPod shuffle challenge: Doom Days - Bastille. Johanna/Gale.When I watch the world burn, all I think about is you.





	Doom Days

**_doom days - bastille_ **

_When I watch the world burn, all I think about is you._

She didn’t wake screaming, not anymore. She dreamed of fire, of gunpowder and smoke, of quick endings; she often woke disappointed it was a creation of her mind, and not reality. She'd not been graced with the title of Mockingjay, "girl on fire", but she'd touched the flames and lived, come out on the other side. She knew what it meant to burn.

But while Johanna was wildfire, untamed, unpredictable, all-consuming, chaos, Gale was a smoldering heat, like the dying embers in a hearth. His fire was muted, subdued; he'd resigned himself to life in District 2, working with the new government of Panem, developing district security and very much going through the motions.

They didn't talk about their night terrors, or much of anything, truly, but Johanna knew he had them. He didn't cry out in the night in fear, though; more often than not Johanna awoke to him in her bed. He was always perched on the far edge of the mattress when she startled awake; his back would be facing her, his breathing far too shallow to truly be sleeping. She didn't wager he got much sleep anymore. She couldn't explain the nagging sensation in her gut that compelled her to drape the corner of her blanket over him before rolling over and sliding carefully off the mattress.

They'd become roommates entirely by accident; she'd flat out refused to cohabit when District 2 government housing assignments were given, and Paylor had laughed in her face and matched her with the only other survivor of District 13 who had responded in kind. She remembered, clear as day, the flash of recognition in his eyes when she'd opened her front door to his tentative knock. In his hands, he'd held a small bin containing his few meager belongings. Johanna had scoffed, "Lovely," rolled her eyes, and turned on her heel, leaving him to stand awkwardly on the doorstep as she returned to the wood she'd been carving at her kitchen table.

She hadn't meant to punish him with her silence, in protest of having more of her freedoms stripped away - it was symbolic, more than anything. She wanted to be left the hell alone – she felt she'd earned at least that much. But while Gale was silent as the game he hunted in District 12, his presence was one not easily ignored. Still, she did her best. Not talking was kind of their thing, but it was obviously – to Johanna's amusement – bothering him. 

Gale's little favors began innocuously enough; of course, once she had him figured out, she had a sick sort of pleasure in testing him. The wood shavings littering the floor beneath the kitchen table started disappearing overnight. Johanna had scoffed at first; who knew the Seam boy was such a neat freak? Within a week she'd caught on, and began leaving extra messes, as though inviting him to extend his favor – crumbs, piles of clothes, even once overflowing the bathing basin. He'd done all but mop up the bathwater, and upon discovering the puddles he leveled her with a withering glare the next time their paths crossed – but he kept his mouth shut.

Then came the meals. Johanna was used to eating once a day, usually in the evening after a day of mapping and surveillance, when she'd arrive home and finally give in to the exhaustion; at that point, she mostly filled her belly to help herself sleep. But one morning, after arriving to the office, she opened her shoulder bag to find an honest-to-God packed lunch. Some kind of jerky, dark, round nuts, and tiny, plum-colored berries, packaged separately in a half-crumpled brown sack. Her lip had curled. She'd half expected her name to written on the back in ink, too. 

She couldn't bring herself to eat it. Gale returned to his desk after the noon break to find the contents of the lunch sack emptied across its surface. Joanna felt his eyes seek her out at her desk in the corner of the room; she kept gaze studiously upon the map she was drawing out, biting her cheek against her smirk.

She awoke the next morning to an empty bed.

Still, that day he packed her peaches, ripe and sweet smelling, and a small container of stew with thick chunks of a tender, hearty-scented meat that had her stomach rumbling at the smell. When had Gale even found time to make a stew?! The kitchen had been spotless that morning when she left, she was certain – despite barely sparing it a glance on her way out the door. She wondered idly if perhaps there'd been more to Gale not crawling into her bed than merely giving her the cold shoulder. It was... Johanna couldn't find a word for how she felt, and her lips twisted. She tucked the food back in her bag, ignoring her hunger. Gale didn't look at her the rest of the afternoon. 

A storm hit the district that night, trapping Joanna inside their apartment like a caged animal. She paced back and forth down the hall, tossing the peach between each of her hands like a ball. Gale had, not for the first time, brought work home with him; his plans were spread out across the coffee table. She knew his work for the security department was important. She knew he was focused, stressed, irritated, even, judging by the way his fists clenched in his hair, tugging at the dark, wavy strands until they stood on end. But Johanna lacked in impulse control, perhaps never caring enough to possess it in the first place, and she weighed the peach carefully in her fist before lobbing it across the room at Gale's head.

Gale was up in a flash, across the room in the time it took her to blink, crowding her against the wall and pinning her with his forearm across her throat. The peach dropped from her hand, hit the floor with a dull think, and rolled out of Johanna's line of vision; her gaze was trapped by the heat simmering in his gray eyes. Despite their apparent vow of silence, Joanna felt she'd gotten good at drawing out his ire, a theory confirmed by his narrowed eyes and the pressure at her windpipe. "What the _fuck_ is your problem?!" She'd awoken the beast, the blazing, raging fire that burned within him. She knew he wasn't intent on hurting her by how easily she was able to shove him off. She grasped at her throat, breathing heavily. 

"Finally, he speaks," she rasped, voice dripping with sarcasm. Gale's responding glare made her stomach twist in a not-unpleasant way. 

"You think you're so unaffected," he snapped, "like you’re too tough to get close to anyone or trust people or accept basic fucking kindness. But it's not a strength like you want to believe – it's a pretty weak and pathetic armor you put up, and I'm sick of it." 

Johanna scoffed. "I didn't _ask_ you to be _nice_ to me, Hawthorne. All I asked, from the beginning, was to be left alone."

"That makes two of us," Gale responded, voice slightly less venomous. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "Look, I'm not being nice to you because you asked –"

"Which means I don't have to pretend I'm grateful," Johanna countered. "If you’re just doing favors expecting something in return, then you're just as bad as all of them." She didn't have to say who _them_ was. 

Gale's thick eyebrows twitched downward. "I just want to be useful," he said quickly.

"You can get over that _real_ quick," Johanna told him with a disaffected shrug, brushing past him – their shoulders bumped lightly – and crossing the room to drop onto the couch. She collapsed back against the cushions tiredly. "You're a child if you think you're going to gain anything trying to help _anyone_. They'll use you and abuse you until they've sucked everything out of you, until you can't _serve_ them anymore, then they'll dump you like old garbage. It's what they did to me, after the games, and then again for your precious Mockingjay. Funny enough," she continued unkindly, keeping her back to Gale, "that's exactly what she did to you."

Johanna knew without looking up that her words had their desired effect; what she struggled with, for a brief moment, was why it felt so satisfying to push his buttons, to make him angry.

"You always do this," Gale said after a pause. "You act like a dick to push everyone away, you put up your walls -"

"Stop trying to psychoanalyze me," she grumbled over him. 

"Nobody's out to get you, Johanna! You can let yourself love somebody. The Capitol can't take them away - not now, not ever again."

Johanna huffed out a sigh and refused to look up at him, ignoring the way her stomach gave an airy swoop when he said her name. 

" _'Love_ somebody'?" she repeated after a long moment, almost mockingly. "What, like _you_? Do you mean _you_? That's the most ridiculous –" Her voice was shaking.

"No," Gale said flatly, and she chanced a look at him through her fringe. He was staring at his feet, face unreadable. "No, that's a stupid thought, isn't it."

He retreated then, and Johanna sighed, closing her eyes against the telltale prickling behind her lids. A door slammed, rattling the frame. Johanna took a deep breath, in, then out, counted to ten, and rose from the couch.

She found him out in the rain, behind the house on their empty stone patio, sitting with his back pressed against the exterior wall of the building. They were on the ground floor; balconies rose above them, and their back "yard" faced a brick building housing a banking institution. Gale had a knife and a hunk of wood in hand; he worked the blade over the wood methodically, carving the edge into a point. He stared hard at the brick as he worked, ignoring her, and Johanna knew in his mind he was picturing his home, a forest, his happy place, where he went to escape; she did the same, often, still not at home in this big city, in this foreign district. She studied the rough pattern of the maroon bricks across from them and chewed her lip. 

"You know, Hawthorne," she said after a long moment, voice calm, "you really need to stop falling for girls who are mean to you." She watched him carefully out the corner of her eyes; he blinked, and his lips twitched. 

"I suppose I do," he replied evenly, turning his head to look at Johanna. His grey eyes were smoldering.

That night, Gale slept at the center of her bed. Johanna even shared the blanket.

_When I watch the world burn, all I think about is you._


End file.
